myCreate

Overview

MyCreate is an iPad app that teachers and students (grades K-12) can use to create stop-motion animations. Taking advantage of the built-in camera in the iPad 2 or 3, students can solely focus on the creative direction of the project -- building scenes, editing the sequences, and overlaying the audio. It was developed based on the same research from Tufts University used to create SAM Animation, iCreate To Educate’s first product.

The goal of iCreate To Educate is to put students at the center of learning by encouraging them to construct and represent knowledge both in physical pictures and models (through crafts), as well as through stop-motion video. As a result, iCreate To Educate pairs myCreate with activity guides and rubrics for teachers, originally developed for the SAM Animation software, for teaching units in science, math and language arts to English language learners.

The activity guides (which are available for free) are not comprehensive but intended to "seed ideas" for hands-on projects, says iCreate To Educate CEO, Melissa Pickering.

The app is available for $4.99 on the App Store and is also available for volume education pricing.

The iCreate to Educate team has received support from research and investment institutions alike. The team has grounded its tool design in research from the likes of the National Science Foundation and Jobs for the Future. With regards to investment, iCreate to Educate announced a strategic investment in the company by Kaplan Early Learning Group in February of 2013.

The iCreate to Educate team is now located in Austin, Texas. Since the myCreate app was released in 2012, use of the tool has spread to schools in multiple countries.